Trulia gave me a rundown of their new marketing platform, Trulia Pro last week. I was all set to sit down and write a big long post tonight until I saw they created a nice little video about it for me.

At $29 a month (the annual price), Trula’s Spotlight Ads are an affordable marketing opportunity that’s two fold for local loan originators.

First off, you can get really local in where you place your ads. City, zip code, and even some predefined neighborhoods. Put yourself in a buyers shoes. They’re looking for a home in a certain area, and you happen to have an office in that same area. You have an opportunity to set yourself apart from online loan originators as the expert in that area. The “local guy” with a brick and mortar office still represents an elevated perception of stability to the public. Take advantage of it.

The second advantage with Trulia’s Spotlight Ads is that you have the opportunity to insert yourself into a buyers consciousness  before they are even thinking about the financing part. So while you are proving yourself as an expert, you’re also doing it before their eventual agent has recommended a loan officer.

I think Trulia could improve on with this product by allowing advertisers to assign different URL’s for each unique location the ad is displayed. That would allow the advertisers to direct traffic to area specific hyper-local blogs, or even simple landing pages with localized content.

This is pretty much a set and forget product. While you might try it on a month to month basis,  the price point dictates that it really only has to pay off once a year for you to break even. If you already advertise online, Trulia will even let you try three months for free. I do like free.